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Seclusion, Separation, and the Status of Women in Classical Athens

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 September 2009

David Cohen
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Extract

It is a commonplace of contemporary classical scholarship that in the classical period the political and social status of Athenian women was deplorably low. Relegated to the ranks of slaves and children, scholars suggest that they were even much worse off than the women of earlier and later periods of Greek history. This paper proposes not to challenge this global judgement as a whole, but simply to focus upon one aspect of women's lives which has played an important role in such scholarly discussions.

Type
Research Article
Information
Greece & Rome , Volume 36 , Issue 1 , April 1989 , pp. 3 - 15
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1989

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References

NOTES

1. See, e.g., Cantarella, E., Pandora's Daughters (Baltimore, 1987)Google Scholar, ch. 1–3, 7; Schuller, W., Frauen in der griechischen Geschichte (Konstanz, 1985)Google Scholar, passim.

2. See, e.g., Padel, R. in Cameron, A. and Kuhrt, A. eds., Images of Women in Antiquity (Detroit, 1983), pp. 3–19Google Scholar; Keuls, E., The Reign of the Phallus (New York, 1985), pp. 82–112Google Scholar.

3. Tro. 645ff. See Vellacott, P., Ironic Drama (Cambridge, 1975), p. 89, but cf. p. 83Google Scholar.

4. Flaceliere, R., Daily Life in Ancient Greece (London, 1965), p. 55Google Scholar.

5. Ibid., p. 69.

6. Gomme, A., in Essays on Greek History (New York, 1967)Google Scholar, passim.

7. Clark, M., Women's Studies (1983), 117–33, 122Google Scholar. See also Friedl, E., Anthropological Quarterly (1967), 97–108Google Scholar.

8. See Whitehead, T. and Conaway, M. eds., Self, Sex, and Gender in Cross Cultural Fieldwork (Urbana, 1986)Google Scholar for the most recent studies of this question.

9. The most penetrating analysis of the manipulation of such categories is Bourdieu's, P. classic study, Outline of a Theory of Practice (Cambridge, 1977), pp. 36–43, 58–71CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Herzfeld, M. in Dubisch, J. ed., Gender and Power in Rural Greece (Princeton, 1986), pp. 215–33Google Scholar.

10. Quoted by Vellacott, , op. cit., p. 97Google Scholar. Of course, fragments of a play cannot be used to validate a particular interpretation. Here they are simply used as a reflection of the variety of ideological views of women which Euripides manipulated for his dramatic purposes. The ideology of the portrayals of women in drama and myth has been the topic of much recent scholarship, although these authors generally do not deal with issues concerning the social reality of women's everyday lives. See, e.g., H. King in Cameron and Kuhrt (n. 2), pp. 109–27; Just, R., Journal of the Anthropological Society of Oxford (1975), 153–70Google Scholar; Loraux, N., Arethusa (1978), 43–87Google Scholar.

11. Pitt-Rivers, J., The Fate of Shechem (Cambridge, 1977)Google Scholar, and see, e.g., Peristiany, J. ed., Honour and Shame (Chicago, 1966)Google Scholar and Davis, J., People of the Mediterranean (London, 1977)Google Scholar. Of course, over-generalization in this area is a danger, as M. Herzfeld has pointed out (n. 9), pp. 215–7 and Man (1980), 339–51.

12. Levy, H. in Pitt-Rivers, ed., Mediterranean Countrymen (Paris, 1958), pp. 137–48Google Scholar; E. Friedl and J. Baroja, both in the same collection, pp. 113–35 and 26–40 respectively. Walcot, P., Greek Peasants, Ancient and Modern (Manchester, 1970)Google Scholar. See also Schneider, J., Ethnology (1971), 1–24Google Scholar.

13. In the Introduction to Mediterranean Countrymen, p. 15.

14. Ibid., p. 10. This is, of course, one of the major themes in Braudel, F., The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World, 2 vols. (New York, 1972)Google Scholar.

15. See, e.g., Bourdieu (n. 9), pp. 41ff.

16. P. Bourdieu in J. Peristiany (n. 11), pp. 193–241. In Outline of a Theory of Practice, Bourdieu examines the way in which such categories operate in a fluid manner in the complex pattern of social and political strategies, rhetoric, and action, pp. 41ff., 159ff. See also Herzfeld (n. 9). On men who are ridiculed for staying around the house, see Maher, V., Women and Property in Morocco (Cambridge, 1974), p. 112Google Scholar.

17. See Campbell, J., Honour, Family, and Patronage (Oxford, 1964), pp. 185–203, 268–74, 301–20Google Scholar; Boulay, J. du, Portrait of a Greek Mountain Village (Oxford, 1974), pp. 121–200Google Scholar; Handman, M., La Violence et la Ruse (Aix-en-Provence, 1983), pp. 71–175Google Scholar.

18. Oec. 7.3ff.; Aristotle, Oec. 1.3–4.

18a. Handman notes that in Pouri the men always suspect their women of lying – but how else to go visit a neighbour for a chat other than saying that one has to borrow something, whether true or false. Most pleasurable activities for women are covered by lies – a necessity which becomes a sort of reflex (pp. 164–5) – a complicated game of sexual politics whereby women preserve a sphere for themselves through the ruse and the lie, which the men know and accept, but through their suspicion and questioning attempt to limit and control. Handman notes that lying in circumstances where there is no apparent benefit at times seems to be a way of leading a life other than her own (p. 166).

19. Cf. a female informant's account in Williams, J., The Youth of Harouch (Cambridge, Mass., 1967)Google Scholar: ‘A good girl walks in the street and doesn't speak to anyone … The bad one, she tries to talk to everybody even if a man doesn't greet her,’ pp. 76–77.

20. Op. cit., p. 55.

21. Tyrrel, W., Amazon, a Study of Athenian Mythmaking (Baltimore, 1984), p. 45Google Scholar; likewise, R. Padel (n. 2), p. 8, ‘confined to the innermost part of the mudbrick domestic house with only limited access even from the private home’.

22. Walcot, P., G&R (1984), 37–47Google Scholar. Humphreys, S., The Family, Women, and Death (London, 1983), p. 16Google Scholar. See also Gould, J., JHS (1980), 38–59Google Scholar.

23. ‘Women on Athenian Vases: Problems of Interpretation’ in Cameron, A. and Kuhrt, A. eds. (n. 2), pp. 103–4Google Scholar.

24. Bourdieu (n. 16), pp. 221–2. See, e.g., Pitt–Rivers, J., Children of the Sierra 2nd ed. (Chicago, 1971)Google Scholar; Campbell (n. 17), pp. 32, 274; Saunders, I., Rainbow in the Rock (Cambridge, Mass., 1962), p. 159CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

25. Maher (n. 16), pp. 2–3, 61, 117, 250–1; J. Williams (n. 19), pp. 67, 83.

26. See Dover, K., Arethusa (1973), 59–73, 69Google Scholar, who briefly notes the difference that social status could make.

27. Walcot n. 22.

28. See, e.g., Berger, M., The Arab World Today (New York, 1962), pp. 119–22Google Scholar; Marx, E., Bedouin of the Negev (New York, 1967), pp. 103–7Google Scholar.

29. Greece: Campbell n. 17; du Boulay n. 17; Friedl n. 7; Handman n. 17; Turkey: A Lloyd and Fallers, M. in Peristiany, J. ed., Mediterranean Family Structures (Cambridge, 1976), pp. 243–60Google Scholar; Stirling, P., Turkish Village (New York, 1966)Google Scholar; Lebanon: J. Williams n. 19; Faller, A., Buarij, Portrait of a Lebanese Mountain Village (Cambridge, Mass., 1961)Google Scholar; Iraq: Fernea, E., Guests of the Sheik (New York, 1965)Google Scholar; Morocco: Maher n. 16; see also Bourdieu, Outline and Pehrson, R., The Social Organization of the Marri Beluch (Chicago, 1971)Google Scholar.

30. Clark n. 7.

31. Lloyd and Fallers n. 29.

32. See n. 28.

33. Bourdieu (n. 16), p. 222; Maher makes the same point (n. 16), p. 112.

34. Pehrson (n. 29), p. 60. For just this reason, in Athens men are often portrayed as obsessed with the trustworthiness of their wives, the ‘guardians of the house’ see, e.g., Xenophon, Oec. 4.

35. The strategic manipulation of such categories is one of the major themes of Bourdieu, Outline.

36. J. Williams (n. 19), pp. 76–77.

37. See also Bourdieu, , Outline, p. 161Google Scholar; du Boulay (n. 17), pp. 190ff.

38. Ibid., pp. 159ff.

39. (n. 19), p. 77.

40. Faller (n. 29), p. 47.

41. Cf. Bourdieu, , Outline, p. 160Google Scholar.

41a. Antoun, ‘On the Modesty of Women …’ ‘The abandonment of particular actions may be justified explicitly or implicitly by the realization of the same norm in a wider context. Thus, although girls are not allowed to look attractive for fear of tempting males, they are dressed up at an early age by their mothers until puberty in order to attract attention to themselves and secure a husband…. Here violation of the norm prohibiting adornment is in order to bring early marriage and in so doing avoid a much more serious breach of modesty …’ (pp. 682–3). The vocabulary of strategic manipulation of norms is preferable, but Antonun's example helps to explain the contradiction between the norm requiring the most extreme modesty for girls and the kind of behaviour Aristophanes describes. Indeed, here again, Aristophanes derives his humour from just the exploitation of this conflict.

42. Dover (n. 26), 69.

43. Bourdieu, , Outline, pp. 35–71Google Scholar.

44. Williams (n. 19), p. 67, and cf. p. 79.

45. I would like to thank Dr Peter Garnsey for his helpful comments and criticisms.